The Iambic Pentameter Solution
by BJMccoy
Summary: Sheldon must come up with a solution to a nagging problem that is interfering with his work..and his life.
1. The Disturbing Emotion Quandry

**Author's Note. This is my first BBT fiction. Please read & review!**

Sheldon had a problem. A big one, It's name was Penny & he had been trying to decide what to do about this problem for some time. His Tuesday Cheeseburger didn't have the same flavor, he hadn't got past 11 in hacky sack for weeks. His work was suffering. It seemed to him that even his favorite  
Mr Spock figurine was looking at him with pity in it's plastic gaze, though he realized such a thinking was absurdly impossible. And yet, here he was, at three o' clock in the morning, a time usually reserved for REM sleep, trying to figure out a solution to his Penny problem.

Oh, he had resisted it. He'd ignored the ridiculous fluttering in his belly when he'd hugged her on Saturnalia. His traitorous body still reacted when he was unable to force the thought of helping her dress after she'd dislocated her shoulder out of his mind. After all, the hero always peeked, right?  
He'd deliberately had read no significance into the fact that she was the only one to defend him after the others had turned on him in the North Pole debacle.

She'd sang soft kitty to him.  
She'd gotten him intoxicated for the first time in his life.  
They did their laundry together.  
She made spaghetti with cut up hot dogs in it just for him.  
He smelled vanilla wherever she went.

Sheldon sighed. He had to admit, he was facing an overwhelming body of evidence. He had to do something about this, and soon. How was he ever going to win a Nobel prize if he couldn't concentrate?  
He scanned his whiteboard; there were five items on it.

1. Consult a physician.  
2. Confide in Amy Farrah Fowler  
3. Confide in Meemaw.  
4. Get psychiatric help.  
5. Talk to Penny about this problem.

He realized that he would have to speak to Amy, sooner or later, and, as things stood, he much preferred later. Psychiatry was hokum, little better than the absurd quizzes in the back of Penny's silly fashion magazines. He obviously couldn't talk to Penny when it was Penny herself that was the problem.

That left a doctor and his Meemaw.

He'd try Meemaw first. He carefully erased his whiteboard and went to bed.


	2. The Interrupted Epistle Evolution

**A/N Thank so much for your reviews! Here is Chapter Two. Let me know what you think!**

_Dear Meemaw,_

_You may be surprised to hear from me as today is Wednesday and my letter writing day is Sunday and today is not Anything-can-Happen Thursday which might account for an unscheduled activity such as writing a letter on a day other than Sunday. However, I am, in the vernacular, on the horns of a dilemma._

_(Fun fact Did you know the original word dilemma in rhetoric was a device by which you presented your opponent with two alternatives; it didn't matter which one he chose to respond to — either way he lost the argument. When you did this to your opponent you were said to present two horns to him, as of a bull, on either of which he might be impaled. As the scholar Nicholas Udall said in a translation of a work by Erasmus in 1548, it didn't matter to which of the two points a person made a direct answer, either way he would run on to the sharp point of the horn.) ***_

_Anyway, Thank you for your last letter, to answer your questions: Yes, I am physically well, at least , I am not unwell. Yes, I have been remembering to wear a sweater when I go out, and yes, I talked to Mom last week and no, I don't know the next time I am returning home and yes, I am still aware that I have promised to go to that dreadful church of hers the next time I am home._

_Getting to my dilemma.._

Sheldon paused. He had no idea what to write here. Perhaps it was because he was writing to his Meemaw on a day other than Sunday, or even anything-can happen Thursday. More likely it was because he was uncertain how to explain to someone else something he didn't even fully understand himself. Perhaps he should speak to Amy Farrah Fowler after all, but Good Lord,. what would he say to **her**?! They had talked several times since they had terminated their relationship agreement a month previously, and he was just begriming to feel comfortable talking to her in any capacity again, let alone explaining to her WHY he had chosen to end it. He had told himself at the time that is was just a matter of his usual discomfort with physical contact, and her insistence on it. But, deep down he'd known better.

After all who wanted to be touched by someone when they were in love with someone else? In love with someone else.. in love with someone else.. someone else...

Drat. Was he REALLY in LOVE with Penny? What a ridiculous notion. Perhaps he should talk to Amy after all. She *was* a neurobiologist after , and while obviously inferior to his field of theoretical physics, it was a useful enough pursuit in its own right. Many brilliant men were reported to be vulnerable to all sorts of eccentricities.

Not that there was anything wrong with *him* of course, his Mother had had him tested.. His thoughts were interrupted by the whir of the TARDIS. Amy must be calling him on Skype. He'd finish a heavily edited version of his letter on Sunday. For now he had to face his dilemma head on.. he just hoped he didn't get gored by the horns...

***Thanks to Michael Quinion at World Wide Words for supplying the text for Sheldon's "fun fact"!


End file.
